What have you done to Cervantes’ arm?

Sunday, April 23, 2006

This week is a significant time for readers who are into the details of literature history all around the world: It’s the anniversary of Cervantes’ death, and on this occasion the founder of the contemporary novel is being commemorated once more.

  This week is a significant time for readers who are into the details of literature history all around the world: It s the anniversary of Cervantes death, and on this occasion the founder of the contemporary novel is being commemorated once more.

  In my personal experience the story of my own encounter with Cervantes has taken a different path. I was only 11 years old when I left Turkey and went to Spain. I had never heard of Cervantes. In my first year at school, a classmate who happened to sit right next to me one day, a little older than me, asked me curiously where I was from. And when she got the answer “Turkey,” she put on a sour face as a reflex that was to remain in my memory for years. "Ah pequena Turca! Que hiciste a Cervantes?"[1]

  I could not understand anything from this even after I translated every word one by one. As time went by, I forgot about this sentence until I came across the name Cervantes in a literature class. "Don Quixote" is a magnificent literary feast and has loyal readers in Turkey. But here, there are some unknown facts about the writer. Cervantes fought in the Battle of Lepanto and fell prisoner to the Ottomans. After a total of five years of imprisonment, he managed to return to his country but he lost his left arm in the ordeal. Hence his nickname the “the cripple of Lepanto.” He had lost his arm to the Turks! Interestingly though, a minimal fact that even small children know by heart in Spain is known by very few in Turkey. Our history books cover the war in İnebahtı (Lepanto), but indeed do not mention Cervantes arm. We have almost no idea how Ottoman history is taught to schoolchildren in other countries. We don t know how history is taught, especially in those countries once ruled by the Ottomans. That s why we Turks are appalled when we hear negative comments about our history from a Bulgarian, an Algerian, a Viennese or a Serb.

  There is a striking dialogue in Ivo Andric s book, “The Bridge on the Drina,” which compares two separate interpretations of history.

  A Balkan nationalist says: “The recruitment system of the Ottomans for the Janissary corps has drained our blood. The Ottomans have taken, kidnapped our brightest brains and used them for their own good. They have ripped them apart from their families, from their mothers, from their villages.”

  Another one replies, “But if there were no such recruitment, these children would have never left their villages, never have been trained and never have made it to the post of vizier.”

  If we want to understand how the rest of the dialogue unfolds and how Ottoman heritage is seen in other countries, we must be able to move beyond the boundaries set by our official history. Without understanding how Ottomans are reflected in the collective minds of different nations, we cannot solve the background of today s “Turk” perception that exists in the world.

  [1] “Ah little Turkish girl! What have you done to Cervantes?”